- NHS hospital
St Richard's Hospital
Assessment report published 11 May 2026
Contents
Ratings - Services for children & young people
Our view of the service
On Thursday 11 and Friday 12 September 2025 we carried out an inspection at St Richard’s Hospital inspecting the children’s and young people’s service. This report relates to the children and young people’s ward, the children’s outpatient department, the children’s day surgery unit and the neonatal unit at the hospital. The women and children’s directorate spans across all sites at the University Hospitals of Sussex NHS Foundation Trust.
We went to all areas which saw children and young people at the hospital. We spoke with 8 children and young people and 8 parents/carers. We reviewed 6 sets of patient records. We spoke with more than 35 staff which included: consultants, resident doctors, nurses, senior leaders, healthcare assistants, administration staff, housekeeping staff and volunteers.
We have rated the service as good. We found a breach of regulation to safe and care treatment. We assessed all quality statements across the safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led key questions and we have combined the scores for these areas with scores from the last inspection to give the rating.
We have asked the provider for an action plan in response to the concerns found at this assessment.
People's experience of this service
We spoke with 8 parents, carers and 2 children. Children and young people and their family or carers were all positive about the staff treating them with warmth and kindness and providing effective care and treatment. Children and young people and their family or carers felt staff were on hand if they needed them for help or support. People said they were involved in the planning of their or their child’s care. They told us that the staff would listen to their individual needs and do their best to meet these. People also said that they felt supported to care for their child by staff. These comments were supported by the findings in the NHS Children’s and Young Peoples Survey 2024. In this report the trust scored about the same as other trusts for most questions but were better than the national average for staff taking time to listen to the fears and concerns of children and parents or carers.